Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Obama, McCain and Their New Pen Pals

In
the age of sound bites, the President and his 2008 opponent are reviving an
ancient art, lobbing letters at foreign adversaries rather than missiles, an
improvement no doubt but neither quite has the hang of it.

John
McCain, in his usual retro style, sends Putin an old-fashioned “Dear Sir, You
Cur” missive, telling his constituents, “I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian
than the regime that misrules you today. They punish dissent and imprison
opponents. They rig your elections. They control your media.”

Speaking
of which, McCain sends his screed to the wrong Pravda(don’t ask, it’s complicated) but Putin surely gets the message.
Will they exchange seconds to arrange for an old-fashioned shootout on some
neutral ground, say an OK Corral in Turkey?

Obama,
on the other hand, finds a new pen pal by passing notes in the international
schoolyard with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, who sees in the exchange “subtle
and tiny steps for a very important future.”

A
welcome change in tone from that of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
was prone to offhand remarks such as that about Israel: “The regime that
occupies Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time.”

Still
and all, President Obama, who has accumulated painful experience in trying to
find common ground with adversaries at home and abroad, is chastened enough to
say only that Rouhani “is somebody who is looking to open dialogue with the
West and with the United States, in a way that we haven’t seen in the past. And
so we should test it.”

By
all means, he and McCain should keep expressing themselves on paper rather than
with tons of hardware, but be sure to use enough postage and double-check the
addressee’s residence.

In
doing so, they may want to keep in mind the strategy of statesman-author
Winston Churchill: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”